Burushaski Language

Basic Language info

Burushaski is a fascinating language. It is a language isolate, which means that there are no widely accepted genetic links to any other language in the world. There are three dialects of Burushaski: Hunza, Nager and Yasin Burushaski. About 100 years ago, a group of ca. 400 people from Nager migrated out to Srinagar, thus their language derived from the Nagar dialect.

Contrary to other online resources that count around 100,000 Burushos, there must be an estimated speaker population of around 150 000 or more, based on a research from 2009, including all three dialects and people migrated out to larger cities and abroad. The Yasin valley is separate from Hunza/Nagar, hence their dialect is considerably different. The Hunza and Nagar dialects are mutually intelligible.

 

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